Friday

Just Another Jane

She racks nine-ball
mornings at Bobby’s Blue Tip;
just another strip bar,
just another street…
current pit in a series of stops
and she’s got a loft,
top of the stairs,
over the stage
where she shakes tit
nights on the ten to four;
shimmies for the jimmies
in business suits,
they buy rounds in applause,
light cigarettes and check
their reflections on the backs of Zippos
always the same faces,
always the same song…
and in the morning
she’ll rack balls,
while the old men match each other
drink for shot;
they move lips that never speak,
their silence reminds her of home.

GRIND IT UP AND SPIT IT OUT, THEY SAID

Eat Your Words

"I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't."— Dylan Thomas